who is charles?


It had happened again. She'd woken up on Sunday morning with no recollection of the previous week. It was as if her internal whiteboard had been erased. There were obvious signs that she had been up and around, going to work and talking to friends. There were records of sales at the shop she didn't remember making, there were text conversations on her phone she had no memory of composing and there was new food in her fridge she didn't remember buying. For the most part, her blackout seemed relatively harmless. She hadn't sent any messages she felt to be ashamed of, she'd gone to work, she'd even gone to the store. But it was unsettling because she couldn't remember a thing. The last thing she remembered doing was climbing into bed on Saturday night and waking up Sunday morning, a week later. It frightened her that she might be experiencing some type of mental break. She could find no explanation for the sudden blackouts. She didn't know why they seemed to last a week, no more no less. To her knowledge, although it was possible she was blocking it out, she had suffered no recent trauma that would send her brain into protection mode.

For the first time in a long time, she was relatively happy. She had a lot going for her. Her business was successful, both the shop and her lingerie line, she had a group of friends she enjoyed being with, she found solace in her alone time, she was healthy and fit thanks to her diet and yoga routine, and she had a PI looking for her son. There was no reason for her to be suffering from blackouts, missing time and memory loss. She didn't want to have to tell her shrink about it. To confess to blackouts would probably get her medicated and that was the last thing she needed.

On Monday night, after taking as much stock of the missing week as she could, she sat at her dining room table and went over the list in front of her. She was taking notes, putting down on paper what she could remember and the facts about her missing time. And stuck to the top of a list was a note. It was and was not written in her handwriting. It was very similar to her own, but it wasn't completely right. It was almost like she'd written the note with the wrong hand. The post-it read: "Find Charles." That was it. Two words. Two words that made absolutely no sense to her. She didn't know anyone named Charles. And even if she did, how would she know it was the right Charles? In her own handwriting, she wrote a reply. "Who is Charles?" She was kind of hoping that something like Frequency would happen and someone in the future or the past would be communicating with her through this post-it and their reply to her question would slowly appear in magic ink. But no such luck. With a sigh, she pushed aside the notebook and dropped her head into her hands. Two months in a row for a week she had blacked out. If the pattern repeated itself for a third time, she would tell her shrink and face the consequences.